


Priest

by Gairid



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 13:42:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gairid/pseuds/Gairid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Santino muses  on his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Priest

Priest. Some of them call me that still, though it's been long centuries since I was born to darkness. I smiled to myself. Such a phrase! Perhaps I should have used upper case letters? I find some of the language used by our little Coven of the Articulate somewhat bombastic at times, but then, who am I to say anything? After all it was I who led the Roman coven and it was fully laden with utterly pompous grandiosity and overblown ritual.

It was Lestat who pointed this out to me on a rare visit I made to New Orleans to see them. I'd gently teased him about his turn of phrase—you know them – Savage Garden, Dark Trick, what have you. He'd frowned a little and then pointed out that I'd been a master of such ostentation back then. “You should not reprove our guest.” Louis chided him and of course Lestat took no notice at all, laughing in that way he has; most inappropriate yet always infectious. By that time, the look on Louis' face had been not so much chiding as it was indulgent. I love them, those two. I don't know Louis very well, but during our short acquaintance I realized his reputation as melancholic is misplaced; he is intensely private and almost frighteningly quick-minded. If he had matched such a descriptive at one time, it was certainly not part of his personality now. And Lestat-I genuinely like Lestat. I like his impetuousness and his penchant for ignoring rules that make little sense to him. I like his ego and I like the way that he has enthralled so many of our kind in one way or another. They either love him or despise him, sometimes both at once, but they never ignore him.

Lestat had a question in his mind, one that he had not come right out and asked—he wanted to know who had turned me.He never did ask me outright. Would I have told him? Very likely not. I have never spoken my Maker’s name to anyone and I see no particular reason to do so now. After all, _he_ knows and he has chosen to keep silent as well. How long ago it had been and how different I was now from the provincial and rigid man I was then, enduring the rape of my mind for weeks on end before he ever showed himself to me—and then the nightmare had turned into passion that put my wits from me. I could think of nothing else during the long days of work marked by the canonical hours. The hymns, the psalms, the readings were ghosts of themselves which no longer drew peace from my soul; the only real thing was him.

I thought him a fallen angel for he ravished me with such sweet ferocity that I thought I should die from the pleasure of it. Then would come sting of his wicked teeth at my throat and my mind would fill with such hauntingly beautiful images that I thought he must have been in heaven once to be able to show me such wonders. He would hold my shuddering body tight to his and whisper questions, so many questions—I don't remember answering him, though I know now he could see the memories he awakened. I loved him, told him I would do anything for him.

And I did. I left the monastery behind and the gentle Abbot who worried for my soul. Brother Anthony, the cook who hailed from the same village as I—little Brother Giuseppe who wept at our parting. Dust, now, all of them, and the Abbot's prayers for my soul must have fallen upon deaf ears.

He brought me to him that very night and not a year passed before he left without a word. I mourned him for years and years and slowly that pain hardened me and turned to malice. 

I have yet to forgive him.

****

FIN

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End file.
